An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology v1.c10.s4.7

v1.c10.s4.7

Apart from giving a date to the contemporary deposits and associated industries, a coin found in a firm structural levels has often decided the date of the concerned structure. A gold coin of the Gupta king Kumāragupta I noticed on the top of a floor level of a particular monastery site at NĀLANDĀ points out that the concerned building belonged to the period of that king or to a period not much earlier than that. Similarly a gold coin of Govindacandra the Gāhaḍavāla king fixed the date of a particular level belonging to the latest phase of a monastery of the same site. At DEVNIMORI the chronology of a *stūpa* and a monastery consisting of different phases could be determined from the Kṣatrapa coins and the coins of the Maitrakas of Valabhī, varying in date from the 3rd to the 5th century A.D. At PAUNI the structural phases of a *stūpa* could be similarly dated from the coins of Sātakarṇi and the Kṣatrapas.